Time to Shine

Swedish company Trapcode has released Shine, their first plug-in which creates volumetric light effects in Adobe After Effects 4.1 and 5. Previously, high quality volumetric lighting could be created in 3D packages (which then had to be composited), or by using slower 2D plug-ins.

According to Peter Norby (founder and programmer), Shine is very simple to implement in AE, “You set a source-point, and it will blur the image radially outward from that point with built-in transfer modes making your animations literally shine. The effect looks very much like volumetric light, but is actually a 2D effect. There are special controls to make shimmering lights and numerous coloring modes.”

Incidentally, Norby was also one of the programmers of Cycore’s Cult Effects, which has since been incorporated into the latest release of Adobe After Effects.